Dancing with Shadows
by 13th Star
Summary: AU For Sirius Black, killing is an art-and he is the city's most accomplished artist. For Harry, survival is precarious. Something you never take for granted. Now paths cross and risks must be taken, risks like Harry Apprenticing himself to Sirius Blac


**The romantic/relationship of this story wont kick in soon, it will, just not happening til late in the story, probably not until the sequel for that matter.**

**I do forewarn you that this story is rated M for a reason. You will also be disappointed to know that this story is actually broken up into 3 'books' as to say or just for simplifying it to Fanfiction 'stories'. I welcome your reviews and encourage you to stay throughout the entirety of the story as you'll find it connecting to previous chapters and eventually stories in ways you didn't think of. As of right now there will not be lemons, but if that's all you're here for then you came to the wrong website, you should have gone to adultfanfiction.**

**You will also find that some chapters are short. Please, **_**please**_**, save us both time and don't bother telling me to write longer chapters. Chapters have already been lined for this complete first story and are split to the chapter length that they are for a reason. It helps the story flow correctly. That being said, expect chapters weekly since this first story is about 66 chapters long with an epilogue and I would hate to take longer than a year to write it out completely and so would you, I assume.**

**Disclaimer: Characters and some plot points are not my intellectual property, they belong to J.K. Rowling and Brent Weeks, I am merely bring two stories together to form what I thought would be not only a thrilling but ultimately fine tale.**

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Harry crouched low in the alley, cold mud squishing through his bare toes. He stared at the narrow space beneath the wall, trying to get his nerve up. The sun wouldn't be coming up for hours and the tavern was empty. Most taverns in the city had dirt floors, but this part of had been built over the marshlands, and not even drunks wanted to drink standing ankle-deep in mud, so the tavern had been raised on stilts and floored with common wood found around.

Coins sometimes dropped through the gaps in the wood, and the crawlspace was too small for most people to go after them. The guild's bigs were too big and the littles were too scared to squeeze into the suffocating darkness shared with spiders and cockroaches and rats and the wicked half-wild tom cat the owner kept. Worst was the pressure of the wood on your back, flattening you every time a patron walked overhead. It had been Harry's favorite spot for a year, but he wasn't as small as he used to be. Last time, he got stuck and spent hours panicking until it rained and the ground softened beneath him enough that he could dig himself out.

It was muddy now, and there would be no patrons, and Harry had seen the tom cat leave. It should be fine. Besides, Dudley was collecting guild dues tomorrow, and Harry didn't have four knuts. He didn't even have one, so there wasn't much choice. Dudley wasn't understanding, and he didn't know his own strength. Littles had died from his beatings.

Pushing aside mounds of mud, Harry lay on his stomach. The dank earth soaked his thin, filthy tunic instantly. He'd have to work fast. He was skinny, and if he caught a chill, the odds of getting better weren't good.

Scooting through the darkness, he began searching for the telltale metallic gleam. A couple of lamps were still burning in the tavern, so light filtered through the gaps, illuminating the mud and standing water in strange rectangles. Heavy marsh mist climbed the shafts of light only to fall over and over again. Spider webs draped across Harry's face and broke, he felt a tingle on the back of his neck.

He froze. No, it was his imagination. He exhaled slowly. Something glimmered and he grabbed his first knut. He slithered to the unfinished pine beam he had gotten stuck under last time and shoveled mud away until water filled the depression. The gap was still so narrow that he had to turn his head sideways to squeeze underneath it. Holding his breath and pushing his face into the slimy water, he began his slow crawl.

His head and shoulders made it through, but then a stub of branch caught the back of his tunic, tearing the cloth and jabbing his back. He almost cried out and was instantly glad he hadn't. Through the wide space between the boards, Harry saw a man seated at the bar, still drinking. In this part of town you had to judge people quickly. Even if you had quick hands like Harry did, when you stole every day you were bound to get caught eventually. All the merchants hit the guild rats who stole from them. If they wanted to have any goods to sell, they had to. The trick was picking the ones who'd smack you so you didn't bother their booth again next time; there were others who beat you so badly you never had a next time. Harry thought he saw something kind and sad and lonely in this lanky figure. He was perhaps thirty, with a scraggly black beard and a wand barely showing in the holster attached to his wrist.

"How could you abandon me?" the man whispered so quietly Harry could barely distinguish the words. He had a flagon in his left hand and cradled something Harry couldn't see in his right. "After all these years I've served you, how could you abandon me? Is it because of Vonda?"

There was an itch on Harry's calf. He ignored it. It was just his imagination again. He reached behind his back to free his tunic. He needed to find his coins and get out of here.

Something heavy dropped onto the floor above Harry and slammed his face into the water, driving the breath from his lungs. He gasped and nearly inhaled water.

"Why Sirius Black, you never fail to surprise," the weight above Harry said. Nothing was visible through the gaps except a drawn wand. He must have dropped from the rafters. "Hey, I'm all for calling a bluff, but you should have seen Vonda when she figured out you weren't going to save her. Made me damn near bawl my eyes out."

The lanky man turned. He voice was slow, broken. "I killed six men tonight. Are you sure you want to make it seven?"

Harry slowly caught up with what they'd been saying. The lanky man was the wetwizard Sirius Black. A wetwizard was like a hit wizard–in the way a tiger is like a kitten. Among wetwizards, Sirius Black was indisputably the best. Or, as the head of Harry's guild said, at least the disputes didn't last long. _And I thought Sirius Black looked kind?_

The itch on Harry's calf itched again. It wasn't his imagination. There was something crawling up the inside of his trousers. It felt big, but not as big as a cockroach. Harry's fear identified the weight: a white wolf spider. Normally Harry wouldn't have been scared about any old spider, he had lived with them enough to not be bothered by them but a white wolf spider was different. Its poison liquefied flesh in a slowly spreading circle. If it bit, even with a healer the best an adult could hope for was to lose a limb. A guild rat wouldn't be so lucky.

"Black, you'll be lucky if you don't cut your head off after all you've been drinking. Just in the time I've been watching, you've had–"

"Eight flagons. And I had four before that."

Harry didn't move. If he jerked his legs together to kill the spider, the water would splash and the men would know he was there. Even if Sirius Black had looked kind, tales of what he could do with his black wand said otherwise, and Harry knew better than to trust grown-ups.

"You're bluffing," the man said, but there was fear in his voice.

"I don't bluff," Sirius Black said. "Why don't you invite your friends in?"

The spider crawled up Harry's inner thigh. Trembling, he pulled his tunic up in the back and stretched the waist of his trousers, making a gap and praying the spider would crawl for it.

Above him, the hit wizard reached two fingers up to his lips and whistled. Harry didn't see Sirius move, but the whistle ended in a gurgle and a moment later, the hit wizard's body tumbled to the floor. There were yells as the front and back doors burst open. The boards flexed and jumped. Concentrating on not jostling the spider, Harry didn't move, even when another dropping body pushed his face briefly under water.

The spider crawled across Harry's butt and then onto his thumb. Slowly, Harry drew his hand around so he could see it. His fears were right. It was a white wolf spider, its legs as long as Harry's thumb. He flung it away convulsively and rubbed his fingers, making sure he hadn't been bitten.

He reached for the splintered branch holding his tunic and broke it off. The sound was magnified in the sudden silence above. Harry couldn't see anyone through the gaps. A few feet away, something was dripping from the boards into a puddle. It was too dark to see what it was, but it didn't take much imagination to guess.

The silence was eerie. If any of the men walked across the floor, groaning boards and flexing wood would have announced it. The entire fight had lasted maybe twenty seconds, and Harry was sure no one had left the tavern. Had they all killed each other?

He was chilled, and not just from the water. Death was no stranger in this part of town, but Harry had never seen so many people die so fast and so easily.

Even taking extra care to look out for the spider, in a few minutes, Harry had gathered six knuts. If he were braver he would have looted the bodies in the tavern but Harry couldn't believe Sirius Black was dead. Maybe he was a demon, like the other guild rats said. Maybe he was standing outside, waiting to kill Harry for spying on him.

Chest tight with fear, Harry turned and scooted towards his hole. Six knuts was good. Dues were only four, so he could buy bread tomorrow and share with Blaize and Doll Girl.

He was a foot from the opening when something bright flashed in front of his nose. It was so close, it took a moment to come into focus. It was a blade, and it was stuck through the floor all the way into the mud, barring Harry's escape.

Just above Harry on the other side of the floor, Sirius Black whispered, "Never speak of this. Understand? I've done worse than kill children."

The sword melted away, and Harry scrambled out into the night. He didn't stop running for miles.

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**Review, I am already working on the next chapter**


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